cross cultural research

Philanthropic decision-making by US foundations that give abroad

Okay, great. Can you tell me a little bit about the history of the foundation?

Sure, so what year did they start? 1992? I will refer you to the website here, just because it's an easy way to get an understanding of who we are, and it has changed over the years. I've been here for 10 years, but their vision and mission has not changed. Things have just become more focused, so that we can have a little bit more impact with our funding. They're really concerned about people and really concerned about the environment and where those 2 come together, and so that you can have an impact on having people live healthy lives and protecting the environment so that we can all enjoy it in the future.

When I, before I got here, I'm trying to think. That was around 2001, 2002. They had been funding more globally. They had been funding all different kinds of programs, still focused on the environment and focused on helping people have healthy, impactful lives. Then, there was a decline in resources, so they realized, well, maybe we should think about, what do we really want to focus on? They came up with a little bit more structure, and I think it was at that point that they looked more at not funding in every single country, but really honing in.

There was a natural synergy with their work in the Project X, so they started to move the other programs in the direction of those 4 countries, so Country A, B, C and D. That was early on, and then, at the same time, they were, the environment, sorry. I should back up. There was the older program area. The oldest program area is the Project X, the environment program, and that has become more focused over the years, but that's been the longest term program. Then, there was a program that originally started out as population and environment, and it has morphed over the years, again, to more tie in with those 4 countries. Then, to be more focused now on empowering girls, so its gone from this very broad program to this very specific program that focuses on developing girls and their leadership and their control of their bodies and their lives.

Then there's a third program that was added in 2007, Project C. That's mostly in North America, so I won't talk very much about that. That's more, these are reflecting the interests of the family, because we're a family foundation, so the husband and wife are more focused with the, well, I can't say that, but they started the programs for environment and girls' empowerment. Then, the Project C is a reflection of that next generation of family, but also very tied in with what they are already doing, so it's just the geographic focus is a little bit different on that one. Then in, so there was more focus than the 2000, 2002 time frame. Then-

What would you say were some of the reasons for becoming more focused? You mentioned budgetary considerations as one.

Right, right, and then wanting to really be able to measure impact, and when things are just spread out everywhere, it's hard to say, "Oh, we're moving the needle on this." It's hard to say that anyway. Trying to identify a specific impact that our funding has is impossible really, but we can look at trends within the countries and at least say we think that our funding is having some of that impact in there. You can't, it's just very hard. That's a lot easier to manage when you've focused it on 4 countries, and then, there was something else I wanted ... yeah. Market factors, the industry itself, but I think those were the 2 big drivers there, was the reduction in resources, and then really wanting to show the impact. That impact, desire to measure impact, fed into another focusing exercise that we had that was, when was that? 2010, maybe? We started looking at long term budget forecasting, and where we wanted to be in 10 years, and what were the things that we wanted to focus on in that next period of time.

Then, there were a lot of things that came together all at once. We were redesigning our website, we had this budget forecasting exercise that helped people really think about where they wanted to be in the future, and so as we were developing these strategies, we were also looking at how to articulate them to our external audience on our website, so it was really a really good time to have all of this come together. Again, the impact measurement, the outcomes measurement, and we've been working with our grantees to try to get them have more capacity to measure impact, which is also difficult because, especially with the empowering girls program, it's very hard because the countries don't measure what they're-

The indicators?

The indicators in the same ways. They don't group the girls in the same age groups. You've got rural versus urban, sometimes they're lumped together. You've got indigenous populations that, sometimes they're lumped in, and it's all very different if you separate them out, and they don't necessarily, the countries don't necessarily release the data on any kind of regular schedule, so that's difficult. Then, the organizations themselves sometimes, they're very small, and they don't have the capacity to do any really in depth analysis of the data that they're collecting, but as part of, oh, and the other thing that came around that same time was we had a new program, we had a change in Program staff.

The program was originally leadership and adolescent reproductive health. Then it slowly, over time and with this change in Program staff, just naturally, organically morphed into empowering girls, because when our new Program Officer came on, to get her grounded in the program, she interviewed all the Board members, and asked them what they wanted the focus to be and where they thought they saw the program going and that kind of thing. It was just this, conversations, and then her knowledge and experience, and so it became even more focused and just better articulated, about what we wanted to achieve. You can see that through the change in the program names over time, and how it's just reflecting more and more what it is we really want to get to, and so then our funding is more and more focused.

I did want to show you this. Part of the exercise in redesigning our website was thinking about all of the factors that can make up this empowering girls. What leads into giving girls a voice and giving them control? They came up with these list of factors. Then-

Can you describe that process a little bit, how did you come up with this list of factors?

Right. They looked at research in the field. We didn't necessarily do any research ourselves, and there was a sister organization that is no longer around, (Name of org), and they focused on prevention of teen pregnancy in DC, so they had a lot of synergy together, and they have the same type, these factors were also for them as well.

Okay. Nationally, like within DC?

Within DC.

Right, so locally working on that. They focused on support teen parents and things like that, maybe promote communication between parents and adults. The foundation decided to pick some certain ones, things that we were already focused on, or that we wanted to start focusing on, like ending child marriage. That was a new priority that really came about when our new Program Officer came in. It's just this kind of organic, for us, it's purposeful but organic, just based on what we're learning about the situation and what we think can help contribute. Also bringing boys and men into the process and educating them, so that was another new thing that was added in as a more explicit focus.

These maybe had been things that were part of our funding but didn't have an explicit place in our priorities and strategies. Those were 2 new things that came about as this interviewing the Board, the new Program staff and just looking at the research that's being done out in the field, because there's so many big organizations that are doing research, UNFPA, Planned Parenthood, ICRW, which may not be large, but they're doing a lot of research in the field. Looking at what they're saying can have an impact on, in the field.

The process of selecting a particular project or a program, because I noticed that you do not accept grant applications, but it's more by invitation only.

Right, yes.

How does that work?

That lies with the Program Officers, the Program staff. With their work, so some of our funding is to US based organizations, and it might, so the US based organizations either work with organizations in those countries, or they might be working globally for advocacy, or trying to get more funding to go to reproductive health in whatever countries. Then, we also fund directly to some of the local organizations in those countries. The Program Officers are visiting those countries multiple times a year. They're working with our, the programs that we fund, learning more about them and who they're partnering with. That's a natural way that they're finding out about these other organizations that are doing good work in the country that we think are at a good place where we can support them.

Then, there also might be, one of our programs that we supported, (name of program). We supported it through a US based organization that was working with these on the ground organizations, and then as a part of that, some new organizations developed that were, instead of being regionally based, they were country based and very, very local. They're just starting to really get off the ground now, and so this year is going to be the very first grant that we're making to one of those organizations directly. A lot of it is either finding out about it through the other organizations we fund, through our research, through talking to other funders in the field, and we do have really good relationships with other funders, and we also try to work with them to get them to fund organizations that we're funding. That's another really good resource.

Then, sometimes these organizations just develop out of the work that we're already funding anyway, and they get to a certain point, or even if we can't fund them directly, we may be providing some technical assistance to get them to the point where they've got really good governance structures and their accounting systems are working well, and then we can fund them directly. Otherwise, we still might fund them using an intermediary that can help them grow and develop. We try to fund locally as much as we can.

That's great.

Yeah.

We talked a little bit about the goals and the priorities and why the specific geographical areas were selected. How often are some of these goals and priorities assessed?

There's no set structure. It really is more taking advantage of what's going on in the field. If some new research came out that pointed to something else in addition to the ending child marriage and involving men and boys, there was some other really strong program that could help with this, then that might be something that our Program Officer would look at and take it to the Board and support why she recommends going with this. I was trying to think. Part of it, I can't, yes, here. Here are, for our empowering girls, these are the programs, the targets that we want tor reach by 2020 in those countries. Now, they're on all kinds of different trajectories to get to those targets. It's likely that when that's getting close, when 2020 is getting close, we would look at reassessing in a more formal way.

Until then, it's not something that, it's more, I keep using the word organic, but it's a more fluid kind of thing, just opportunities in the market and the field and with our grantees. When we're getting close to that 2020 deadline, I'm sure there's going to be a more formal look at how we're doing against those targets, how our grantees are doing. Are those still the right targets? Has there been new research that shows not only secondary school, we've got to keep them in secondary school, but now research is showing that you've got to intervene in Kindergarten, so maybe that's where we shift our focus.

You mentioned the long term planning aspect of it, and the 10 year projections. Is that something that's more typical? That it's kind of a long term plan for 5 years or 10 years, and then reassessment at the end of it?

Yeah, yeah. It's just that there's not a set time frame for when that happens, but since we do have this 10 year plan, that's a natural time to start looking at that. Yeah. I would say that we tend to operate a little bit less formally than a lot, especially larger organizations that might have a strategic planning process every 5 to 10 years, and people know that it's coming. We operate a little bit more informally because we're small and we can do that. If it, Project X, for example, just recently, within the past couple of years, plastic pollution has become a big issue. We want to respond to that, because that certainly, we hadn't really considered that, but there's new research on that. We're starting to respond to those and include some grants that address that.

Right.

There's always something new coming up that feeds into it, but again, it's not a structured, formal process, necessarily, unless we've got something like these 2020 targets coming up, so it's more, or there's a change in our budget or funding structure or something. Yeah.

Great, so it's the identification of new research or new issues from the grantees, or from the Program staff or-

From the grantees.

Yeah, or other funders, because we don't do, in house, we don't do any research ourselves, but the Program Officers are always scanning the literature, talking with the grantees about new opportunities, and talking with other funders. We do, we have very strong relationships with the other funders and with our grantees. We are very, we have really individual relationships with them. I've worked at some larger organizations where it's not quite so personal, but we have very strong relationships with our grantees. They point out things that they think we need to know about, and that's how we get a lot of the new opportunities for funding.

What would you identify are some of the key factors in the external environment of the organization, so in terms of policies or mandates that have influenced some of your work?

Right, so, well, that's a huge factor. I'm thinking, especially with, well, in both programs. US priorities, whether it's when, there's the Millennium Development Goals, those always have a big impact, and then some of our grantees are working to help shape that. There are, there was something that I just thought of that went out of my mind. IRS regulations, of course, have a big impact, because they're, before I started working here, there was the Pension Protection Act, and things like that. That has an impact on what types of organizations you can fund easily, and then other organizations, it's either more difficult or impossible, so you have to find different ways to get the work done. You might end up funding different organizations.

As in intermediaries, or-

Either intermediaries or maybe there are partner organizations that you could work with, or yeah. Yeah. I'm trying to think, what kinds of things? Yeah, I can't think of any specifically, like with the Pension Protection Act, but I know that has had an impact on some of the organizations. The, darn it. In the countries themselves, oh, I know what it was.

When the US is setting its budget for, not advocacy, but for the money that we're going to give to other countries for their reproductive health and health issues and things like that. If there's, depending on the administration, it's more important or less important. The whole thing with cutting Planned Parenthood funding and that, so we way need to make an emergency grant to Planned Parenthood, or we may need to focus more on advocacy in a particular year, depending on if we think that budget might be cut. It just, we can't fund lobbying, and we make sure our grantees know that. US policy, certainly, has an impact on the types of things that we might fund in any given year, based on what we think is going to happen.

Then, within the countries themselves. When they go through a shift in priorities or focus for the government, sometimes the government might be really open to environmental protection, so, oh, okay, let's, what are they focusing on, and can we work with organizations to strengthen that focus or to make sure that they have the information they need? That kind of thing would have an impact on who we're funding and what the focus is, so, yeah.

Recently, Country A, responding to the international group that's, it's F-A-T-F, FATF, that's working on these regulations to prevent money laundering and other, that's not its sole purpose, but that's one of the things that it's looking at. Countries are responding by putting these regulations in place for nonprofit funding, or if organizations get any international funding. It just depends on the country.

Country A, it used to be very easy to fund their local organizations. The IRS, the Justice Department, there was a treaty that was in place which hadn't been completely ratified, I think, by US, but it was Country A’s local charities, local NGOs, were likely to be seen as a US public charity as well. There are certain procedures we have to follow to do that, but it was less of a question. Now, Country A requires those NGOs to collect information on their donors, not just the organizations but the staff at those organizations. For example, you might be asked to provide the passport of the executive director or a driver's license, and it's not clear how safe that information will be in that database, and then the transferring that information to the government, and the government database, there's always a risk for information to get out or to be used incorrectly.

That had a big impact on the organizations that we chose to fund because we didn't want to expose our staff to that kind of, you're sending this stuff by email. Identity theft is very easy these days, if you've got somebody's driver's license or passport or whatever. We made a decision that we weren't willing to do that, but some organizations are. There are organizations that already had relationships with our grantees in Country A, and so we're able to continue the work, but fund different organizations, so more of the intermediary, which is a shame.

Talked a little bit about the decision making process. Could you outline, maybe step by step, from conception of, say, a program objective to what it looks like in the field? Just the decision making process.

In terms of actually making the grant, or deciding which organization to fund, or all of it?

Okay. Right, so for example, we'll use the preventing pollution, ocean pollution, the plastics. That came, let me think. We fund a program called the Project X, and it develops leaders in those countries who are working on an environmental issue, specifically reef health. They started to focus, is that a door closing? What was that? They started, they have a different cohort of leaders each year, and they work with them intensively. Professional development, public speaking skills, education if they need it, it just depends. They change their focus each year. Sometimes I think they prescribe the focus, and sometimes they just see what kinds of applications they get, so I'm not sure whether preventing the, whether ocean pollution was a prescribed one or came out of the applications they were getting, but they started funding that, leaders in that area, and then we saw that, and realized that that was something we needed to focus on.

Our Program Officer started talking to them, started talking to other funders and other groups in the region, and found out who was working on it. Did he know those people? Were they strong organizations? How long had they been around? Were they organizations that we could fund, and were they just starting out? Did they have some track record of achievement? I'll pause a little bit here. We're kind of 2 sided on that. Sometimes we like to get in at the very beginning of a project and get it going, and then hand it off to other people, to other organizations to fund. Then, other times, we like to be part of a larger group of funders that's working on this particular project, so that, it just depends on what the project is and where it's going.

Out of that research that the Program Officer was doing, he identified 2 or 3 organizations that were working in the field. We started off making small grants, just to test the water, see what they were thinking of doing, and then we're continuing that funding even at a larger scale today. That's become an identified priority that we're working on, so identify the organization, start talking to them. They may have months of conversations that go on before we invite a proposal. At some point, the Program Officer feels like they're ready to invite a proposal, so invite the proposal, get it in. It goes for review with all our other proposals at a Grants Review Committee meeting, and-

How frequent are those?

We usually, for each program, there are usually 4 to 6 a year. Then, if the grants are large enough, if they're over $250,000, they go to the full Board for review. There's some, when we have these review meetings, if it's something new, sometimes the Program Officer will approach it in a conversation with the Grants Review Committee prior to inviting a proposal, and get their blessing. "Yes, this is where we want to head," or, "We don't know if we want to, but let's do an exploratory grant and find out."

It's rare that they would nix something, that they would say, "No, we're not interested in learning about this at all," but they may ask for more research to be done and more reporting on it. Then, if everybody's okay with it, invite the proposal, goes through our internal due diligence, just for organization health and making sure, yes, this is a real organization, that yes, we can fund legally and cleanly. Then, present it to the Grants Review Committee with a justification, kind of an assessment, and why we should be funding this, and what we expect to get out, what the outcomes would be from this, and then grant. The project happens, we get reporting on it, monitor it throughout.

We usually get 1, at least 1 Board update, what we call a Board Update Report. It's like a short narrative report from our grantees, so that the Program Officers can go back to the Board. We have 2 Board meetings a year. They can update the Board in an interim fashion on what's going on with the projects, and then at the end of the project, we get a final report, where they're reporting more formally on the numbers, the percentages, this is what we're doing, this is what we did, and what they're planning for the future. Sometimes, by that point, we already have a good sense of what's going on, so before they submit that final documentation, we've already invited them for a new proposal, depending on how successful the project was. Again, a lot of our grants are renewal grants, so we're in for the long haul. Sometimes they're just 1 or 2 grants for a specific purpose that doesn't really have a longitudinal focus, so that's, did I cover your question?

Yes, you definitely did.

Okay.

I do have 2 follow up questions.

Sure.

Could you talk a little bit about the due diligence process? What are the things that you look for in your grantees to make sure?

Sure. I'll talk about the 3 processes. The easiest process is our standard grant making. These are US, 501(c)(3) public charities. They're very easy to vet. There is a database that you can check and, yes, if they're in there, then they're usually doing what they're supposed to be doing. They're certified by the IRS as a 501(c)(3) public charity.

What database is this?

It's GuideStar.

Yeah, and it collects information from the IRS, so it's very easy to look it up. We look at their Board list, and I run the Board and staff through a terrorist watch list. We use a product called GIFTS Online by MicroEdge. That's our grants management database, and it is linked to GuideStar and it's linked to a number of terrorist watch lists. I enter the names in, and I push a button, and it goes and checks for me. If any come back, I might have to go ask the organization, "What's the full name of the Board member? Where was he born? Can you give me his date of birth?" That kind of thing, so I can make sure this is not the same person, but they never are. Well, knock on wood. There haven't been.

I make sure that they've submitted all the documents that we've asked for. We have a standard grant guidelines that we send out. For each program area it's different, but it's the same type of organization we're collecting. Board list, the proposal narrative that has very specific questions asking what were looking for, asking what they're going to do to meet these goals. Their project budget, both how they're going to spend our grant if they get it and the total project budget, so if there are 5, 10 other funders, what makes up the total project and how they're spending that money. Who those funders are, has the funding been received, or do they think they're going to get it, or are they just thinking about submitting a proposal, because we want to know all that information. Then, the organization budget, the last 2 years of audited financials, and their current year to date financials.

We actually, it sounds like a lot of information, but we're on the lower end of what some organizations require. We try. We try to make it as easy as possible for our grantees. Some organizations like, we fund the Smithsonian. They're not going to give us internal financial statements, but they're also not going anywhere. We have a pretty good sense that they're in good financial health. It just depends. Again, if it's, well, that doesn't apply so much to the US 501(c)(3) public charities. If it's a smaller organization, we may schedule some technical assistance beforehand, before we invite the grant, but this is our standard process.

I review those things. I read the proposal. I make sure that they're not going to use our money for lobbying or anything else that we couldn't fund or any illegal purposes or anything like that. Then, at the same time, the Program Officer is reviewing it for their own purposes. Does the project budget seem realistic? Can they really achieve these outcomes in 12 months, or should we make this an 18 month grant, or should it be a planning grant? Some of these things they've already talked about before the proposal comes to us, but, what else are the Program Officers looking for? They're looking more, the viability of the project.

Then our CFO reviews it, and she's looking for organizational health and stability. In the project budget, do the salaries make sense? Indirect costs? Are they getting a reasonable amount in indirect costs, but not an exorbitant amount, because we want to make sure that they're getting money to be a strong organization.

Wouldn't larger organizations typically have higher administrative indirect costs?

It depends. It depends on how they're structured and it depends on how they structure the project budget.

Would that influence any funding decisions if they did?

It might. It might. We might say, "We just cannot fund 30% indirect costs. Are there other organizations? Do you have general support that you can use for that?" We don't run into issues with that so much, but we might say, "Wow, you've got a lot of money dedicated for consultants. Can you explain a little bit more how you're going to use them?" It's a lot of back and forth during that review time, and a lot of that would be the Program Officer. I'm following up more on if the CFO has a question, like, "It looks like you're using some restricted money to cover other costs. Can you talk a little bit about that," and that kind of thing. Again, that's also rare. Sometimes they're just not clear on how to fill out our forms, so we have to go back and help with that. Then ...

Is the process very different for organizations outside the US?

Yeah. Outside the US, it's a much heavier lift. However, it's gotten a lot easier since we are using NGOsource, and they do our expenditure, our equivalency determinations. There are 2 ways, usually, that we can fund organizations outside the US. There is a third way, if they have a US 501(c)(3) public charity status, which 2 of them do, which is very convenient, but if they don't, we can fund through equivalency determination, which is where we are determining that, if they were in the US, they could be treated as a US public charity.

There's a very defined process that you have to go through, and the organizations, it's a lot of work for the organizations, and it was a lot of work for us, because you're looking over 5 years of financial information. You have to look at their bylaws and their articles of incorporation, and make sure that there's no private inurement. There's no, if the organization dissolves, then the assets have to be used for a similar charitable purpose, and they can't, it's all this crazy stuff, which makes sense because that's what US public charities are held to. You have to make sure that they're a similar type of organization. Sometimes you can certify them, and sometimes you can't.

We had one organization in, it may have been Country C. They didn't have the clauses in their bylaws that would be needed, and they couldn't change them because it's not just an internal conversation, and then filing your new bylaws, it was a governmental action was required. You don't want to come to the attention of the government, so we're like, "Okay. We're not going to, we'll find a different way." The US IRS and Treasury Department agreed that you can now rely on some organizations to do this work for you. NGOsource now does that work for us, and they've got a whole cadre of lawyers, and they have people who speak the language in country and can explain all of this crazy stuff to them, so that helps us. We just pay each time we need a equivalency determination done.

Then, there's expenditure responsibility, which is for those organizations who can't qualify for equivalency determination. You have to follow another set of procedures. It's very restrictive. It's actually pretty simple, but we, because of the way these grants are structured, we will not fund subgrants or equipment or capital expenses, because this type of grant they would have to report through the lifetime of that capital expense. If they're going to do subgrants, then they also have to follow this expenditure responsibility. It's a little, it's more risky in that if the funds are misused or used for an incorrect purpose, the Program Officers can be held personally liable and responsible and be fined, and we could lose our tax status and everything. Sometimes, there's no other way to be able to fund these organizations, and if it's important and they're important to getting these objectives met, that's what we do.

Great. Another follow up question I had was about grant renewal. What are some of the criterias that you would look for before you renew a grant, or is it something that's kind of like-

It's actually a similar process. The Program Officers are staying in touch with the grantees over the life of the project, over the life of the grant. Some of these projects may be 5 year projects, but our grants are only a year. If they're meeting their objectives and they seem to be healthy and strong, then we'll continue to work with them. Yeah, and we usually ask them to submit a full proposal each time, which is, we haven't gotten away from that. It's a lot of work for the grantee to submit a brand new proposal. We've tried different ways to make it a little less burdensome on them, but we usually end up getting a full proposal each time we make a grant.

We talked a little bit about organizational strategies when making decisions on programs and projects. Do you have anything to add about that?

Let me see. Let me just look at these notes I've written down. Yeah, organic change unless driven by market and industry factors or internal activities like budget forecasting. Financial market, the field, the program field, and changes in philanthropy. Federal and country regulations, we talked about that. Program Officer exposure and research, travel to the field. The valuation and outcomes. Especially when we're hitting this 2020 time frame, there may be some changes to what we want to fund in the future. If we've met the goals or if we haven't met the goals, maybe there's a different goal we want to pursue. We talked about, sometimes we like to be the seed funder, and sometimes we want to be with a big group of funders funding something, whether or not-

Does that look different for different projects? Was there a reason why?

Yeah, yeah. That, it really is project specific. Sometimes we want to see something get off the ground, and there are no other funders. There's just nobody that's funding it. Then, some organizations, we may just give a little tiny, we may give a $25,000 grant. It gets us, keeps us in that project, so we're informed about what's going on, and we're working with these other, much larger funders. It really just depends on the project.

Whether or not we think we have an ability to have an impact, that comes into it. Partners, all right, let's see. Refining focus, advocacy, oh yeah. We used to fund a lot of advocacy organizations, but we've really pulled back on that and are looking for more of the programs that are on the ground, organizations that are doing the actual program work, but the advocacy and those research organizations are important.

We do fund some of those programs, even though the link directly to our outcomes is not a strong link. It's more, they're supporting our grantees in a way, because they're providing this research to the field or they're advocating for and educating policy makers, that kind of thing. Let's see. Oh, and we do have a very engaged Board. Some of them actually work in the fields, so we've got some expert advisors, and others of them are just very passionate about it. Yeah. I don't think I have anything else to add to that.

Great. We talked a little bit about organizations that you support, and what are some of the characteristics that you would fund for. We talked about the size and the administrative expenses, so also, are you looking at organizations, of course, with specific geographical focus?

Yes, yep. Either they're working in the country, excuse me, or their programs are benefiting those 4 countries. We try not to fund too much outside of the US or those 4 countries, but we do have some grantees that are working in, maybe Nicaragua, that, and I don't think that we fund them anymore, but they had a program that was benefiting not only Nicaragua but it could have been Belize or Guatemala. I can't remember exactly the countries. The geographic focus is key and the program focus is key. Size, we've funded from very small nascent organizations to, like I said, the Smithsonian and others. It just depends on what that project focus is and whether or not we think there's a chance that they'll be successful, or whether we're willing to take the risk to find out. You have to weigh, it's like a risk management, risk assessment, so yeah.

Interesting, so do you look for past experience, or you said that you do fund nascent organizations as well.

Right. Sometimes, if it's a new organization, it's probably a person that's running it that we know has had, has worked on these issues in the past with different organizations or they used to be in a different position, and now they're running an NGO or something like that. We are focused on people, we don't fund individuals because we can't, but we are focused on the people. We do look for strong leadership and a strong commitment to the issues. The size, and the range of our grants is very different. Some organizations, we might only give $5,000. Some we might give millions over time.

Right. Over time.

Yeah.

Okay. Interesting. What about the target population? Are there any main factors?

The target population could be policy makers. It could be the environmental or reproductive health community in those countries. It could be direct services to the rural population there, or to indigenous groups, or girls and women, men and boys. There's not a standard population, but there are certain groups that those projects would target. I'm trying to think if there's a group, like we wouldn't fund a project that was focused on, I don't know, some targeted audiences. The ultimate goal would be to impact the people in those countries, the young, in empowering girls, it would be to impact the girls. Not every project is going to specifically focus on those girls. It might be on the regulatory environment. Ultimately, we hope it impacts the girls, but that's not a requirement for those projects.

That's good. These were all of my questions, and we talked, in terms of future direction, just reevaluating post 2020. Is there any other kind of future directions that you think the foundation's taking?

I don't see anything changing dramatically right now. I think, even though 2020 is only, what, 4 years away, which is crazy, I think we'll still be looking at those opportunities to take advantage of, like the preventing ocean pollution, which was a new one, and the child marriage, and working with men and boys. Just as research in the field comes up, and other funders are bringing things to our attention, grantees bringing things to our attention, but I don't see a wholesale reevaluation of these areas. I think I would anticipate that we would continue in these 3 focus areas, and then, and I ...

Cuba. That's, yes, so that's a big deal, because some of the ocean currents around Cuba have an impact on the Reef in terms of larval dispersion and seeding the fish stock. We can't fund in Cuba, but we can fund-

Not yet.

Yeah, not yet, but with this changing regulation, it's becoming a little bit more open, and one of the things that we were concerned about is that mass tourism going to Cuba. I don't know how much of a difference the US is going to make, because other countries have already been able to go to Cuba, but it's going to have some impact. Our Program Officer is looking at that. While we're not going to change our focus, it's going to be the 4 countries, but because Cuba's waters and the fish in those waters affect the 4 countries in the reef area, we are looking at projects that have an impact on Cuba.

That was very recent, obviously. Are we going to have a program that focuses on, are we going to add Cuba? No, but it's just another one of those, something new happened, we're going to respond to it, because it impacts our geographical focus. I don't see that geographical focus changing, really changing, or the 3 program areas. They'll, they may refine, they may have little side things that they focus on, but I think they'll pretty much stay the same.

Then, our founders, we reflect their interests, and their children, and as their children start, when I say children, I mean they're my age and older. As they start to take on more of a role in the governance of the foundation, there might be more focus here or there. There could be a new program area, but who knows. We are small enough that we can be flexible about that, but I don't see that happening anytime before that 2020 kind of decision.

Great. Any final comments that you have?

No, no. I don't. I think we've covered everything.

I think so, too. Thank you so much.

You're welcome.

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